3 Responses to Capitol Hill Weekender

Outstanding posts, Tony. For the guys who posted in the “missional” strain, see if you can find a single use of the word in these two reports from CHBC. Dever is teaching people how to do church like the Bible says to do it, including serious study of and return to the Reformation roots of evangelical Protestantism. In other words, emerging is the opposite of what we want to do. We want to submerge. In the depths of historic, orthodox, faithful Christianity.

Okay, Dave. We get your point. I still think you missed ours. What you just did here is in poor taste and violates generally accepted blog etiquette. Confine your comments to the topic or don’t comment at all.

With respect, Brother Newell, I don’t think you got my point at all. But the point has been made, and what you do with it is your business. As for my comment here, it is very much on-topic. Nothing at all that violates blog etiquette about comparing and contrasting the spirit of a present strain with another strain. Such comparison and cross-referencing is what blogging is all about.

What is so great about Dever’s church and 9-Marks ministry is how thoroughly faithful it is. Solid grounding in the Bible and history and the authentic gospel. Five blocks from the U.S. Capitol Building and Supreme Court, but no trendy culture-watching or culture-envying. Instead, genuine humility and selflessness and sanctification, led by Dever’s signature candor and unpretentiousness. They emphasize *distinction* from the culture, and how you have to be different from the culture if you are going to influence it. The way you become different in the right way is by holding to true, orthodox doctrine, living it out, and preaching it out in true evangelistic and missiological (two perfectly good words that don’t need to be replaced or updated) fashion. The emergent “missional” ethic is the polar opposite on both these points – be like the culture (“contextualize”) and make your orthodoxy “generous,” as McLaren puts it, which basically means be cool and intellectual in an ironic sort of way, wear square glasses (as Mohler is fond of saying), run an open-minded, “generous” blog, and for heaven’s sake don’t be one of the frozen chosen fundamentalists who upset everyone with their robust adherence to the truth. Sheesh, nobody likes those guys.